The Widow Wager (21 page)

“There are a great many wrong things about what you just said,” she said, trying to keep her tone from being sharp. “So many, in fact, that I scarcely know where to begin. First off, you already know that it wasn’t Crispin who came to our house like a villain with a plan. Father took advantage of
both
of us with his schemes.”

“The difference is that you were an innocent in that plot and
Crispin
gambled with every knowledge of who he was sitting down with. He says he was an innocent party, but how do we know the truth. He could have been in league with Father all along.”

Gemma gritted her teeth. Mary seemed so very young right now and so very set in her ideas. “I promise you, I am no fool. I believe that Crispin didn’t have any idea as to Father’s machinations.”

“And yet you’re still married,” her sister said softly.

Gemma folded her arms. “Which, if you must know, was my doing. Crispin wanted to get the thing annulled and was willing to go to court to argue a fraudulent marriage. But he asked me what I wanted, Mary.”

Mary’s eyes went wide and Gemma nodded.

“Yes, a man who asked my opinion on my own life, isn’t that a thought?”

“So you are saying staying wedded to this man was
your
idea?” Mary burst out in what seemed to be pure shock.

“Because the alternative is not very pleasant, my dear. Think about ruin. Think about destruction. Think about you never being able to wed well. If that had come to pass, Father would have simply sold you to the highest bidder.” Her sister went very pale. “When Crispin heard my plea for you and thought about the consequences of such a decision for his own family, we agreed together to stay married and make the best of this very bad situation.”

At that moment, there was a knock at the door behind them and it opened to reveal one of the maids and her tray of tea and food. She set it out for Gemma to serve and bobbed out a nod before she left the sisters alone again.

Gemma poured Mary a cup of tea and flavored it to her liking. When she looked up to hand the drink over, she found Mary staring at her clenched hands in her lap, her lip quivering.

“What is it?”

“You stayed married for me,” her sister whispered. “You gave up any chance you have at true happiness for me.”

Gemma set the teacup down and shifted to sit on the chaise next to Mary. She wrapped an arm around her and hugged her gently.

“You misunderstand. Yes, Crispin and I made a decision to remain in this union partly to reduce the scandal for those around us. But…” She hesitated for she was about to admit something out loud that she didn’t know if she was ready to say.

“But?”

“Crispin is not what you have made him out to be,” Gemma whispered. “He is far from a monster. He is also far from perfect, but so are all of us. He can be very kind, he can be very attentive, he can be…”

She trailed off, uncertain how to proceed. She and Crispin had been together for less than a week, but yet she felt she had known him for far longer.

“What can he be?” Mary asked, swiping at the tears that had sparkled in her eyes a moment before.

“He can be a good husband,” Gemma offered since she could say no more without revealing too much, even to herself. “And…and you may be right that he does not love me, you may be right that he will
never
love me. But that does mean that we could not have a good life together. I accept him and he accepts me. Sometimes that is the best one can hope for.”

But as she said the words, she realized how hollow they sounded. She had not often thought of another marriage after Theodore died. But when she had, she’d hoped she might get a chance to choose her mate for love.

She pushed the thoughts away.

“At any rate,” she continued, forcing Mary to meet her eyes. “I urge you to give him a chance. And since this is his house and he is kindly allowing you to stay here, I order you to at least give him the respect he deserves.”

“Because if I don’t, he might turn on us?” Mary asked, a twinge of fear in her voice, even as she reached for the forgotten cup that had been prepared for her.

Gemma shook her head. “No, he isn’t like Father. You do it because he deserves that respect, if nothing more.”

Mary took a sip of tea as she pondered Gemma’s words. When she set the cup down, she sighed. “I will do as you ask of me, Gemma. I will try to get to know the man, at least a little. For you.”

Gemma relaxed a little. “Good. It means a great deal to me.”

Mary sent her a side-glance. “Is that because Crispin means a great deal to you?”

Gemma caught her breath. Her cheeky sister had just shot an arrow at her without even knowing what she did. There was truth in the question. Even after such a short acquaintance, she did think of Crispin as an important person in her life. In fact, she thought of him all the time.

She shrugged, the motion entirely dismissive of the confusion in her chest. “He is my husband, Mary. I don’t think it is such a foolish thing to view him as a significant part of my new life.”

Her sister pondered that. “I suppose not.” Mary let out a long sigh. “Well, why don’t you tell me about this duke and duchess, then? Will they be very hard on me as chaperones? I don’t want to make a fool of myself with my country manners.”

Gemma leaned forward and began to reassure Mary of all the kindness she would find in Rafe and Serafina, but even as she did so, her errant mind kept coming back to Crispin and the realization that her sister was right. He was terribly important to her.

And that would not,
could
not end well.

Although it was only late afternoon, Crispin’s curtains were drawn and he sat in the dark, a drink in his hand, staring at the fading embers of his fire.

How long had he stood in the hallway, listening to Gemma and Mary whisper? Giggle?

“Too long,” he muttered to himself.

He took a sip of his drink, though he didn’t know how many this one made. He’d stopped counting at three. All he knew was that for the first time since he married Gemma there was a blessed sense of calm over him. A cloudiness to his mind that made it hard to think about things he didn’t want to consider. So many, many things.

The door to the office opened and in the light from the hallway, he recognized the perfect form of his wife as she stepped inside into his darkness. She hesitated in the light for a moment and then pulled the door shut behind herself.

He could no longer see her face, but he heard the disapproval in her voice as she said, “There you are. I have been looking for you.”

He had been slouching in his chair and forced himself to slide up, straighten up, as he watched her shadow stride across the room. She stopped at the fire, where she threw a log or two in and stoked the flames back to life, lighting up the room again.

The firelight hit her face and Crispin took a long breath. She looked like an angel. A flame-haired angel, one that had battled and lost but kept going.

She stared at the drink in his hand and she frowned slightly. He felt the strangest urge to set the drink aside, hide it. After all, he had been trying to improve himself since they wed. Trying to prove to her…and to himself…that he could be better. But maybe he couldn’t.

“Is your sister settled?” he asked.

She remained at the fireside, watching him. “Yes,” she said softly. “I put her in the guest wing room closest to our side of the house, but still far enough away that she will not, er…hear anything that would shock her.”

Crispin chuckled as he drank again. “Yes, we wouldn’t want to do that to the poor girl.”

Gemma didn’t laugh with him. “Are you sorry she’s here?”

He jolted at the question. His mind might be addled, but he didn’t recall being sorry that Miss Mary Quinn was here. Hadn’t he arranged the whole thing in order to gain some of his wife’s approval?

Or perhaps that was what his
brother
had done. He scowled.

“Crispin?” she pressed.

He blinked. He hadn’t answered her question. “No, of course not. I wanted Mary here as you did. I’m pleased to have her.”

She took a step toward him. “Then why didn’t you stay with us when she arrived or join us for our luncheon? And why are you sitting in the dark half-drunk?”

He arched a brow. “You don’t like my drinking.”

She folded her arms. He couldn’t help but notice how the action lifted her breasts ever so slightly. Breasts he suddenly wanted to see, to lick, to fondle until she stopped frowning at him.

“Your drinking tends to get you into trouble, Crispin,” she said softly.

He got to his feet, drink still dangling from his fingers, and took another step toward her. “Am I in trouble?”

Her lips pursed and she explored his face. There was true concern in her eyes, worry that he had seen too many times and on too many faces of those who loved him. Of course, she didn’t love him. And yet she was still concerned for him. Somehow.

“I don’t know, you don’t want to tell me,” she whispered. She shook her head and auburn curls danced against her pale cheeks. “In truth, I sometimes feel I don’t know you at all.”

Crispin tensed. “You know enough. If you get too deep—”

He cut himself off, and she stepped closer. “What will happen if I get too deep?”

“One of us will get lost. One of us will drown,” he whispered.

She held steady on his gaze for a long moment before she finally let out a small sigh. Then she closed the remaining gap of space between them and cupped his cheeks. She drew him down and surprised him by pressing her lips to his. She was very gentle with the caress, but insistent as she pressed her tongue to his lips. He parted them willingly and groaned as she pushed inside, tasting him. Tasting the evidence of his drinking, though she didn’t recoil from it.

What she did do was glide a hand down his arm and take his glass away. She parted from their kiss only long enough to set the glass aside on the table, then returned to him to wind her arms around his neck.

“Mary is upstairs, settling in and then having a nap. She has not slept well in the days since you and I wed and she was left alone with my father.”

Crispin smiled. “That is excellent, both for your sister’s health and so that we have enough time to do more of this.”

He cupped the back of her head, tilting her face up and claiming her lips in one smooth, gentle motion. She let out another sigh, but this one was not one of frustration or resignation or upset, but of surrender, and it was like music to his ears. He guided them toward the settee, never breaking the kiss and sat down. He drew her into his lap where she settled in, stroking his hair as they kissed.

His arms tightened around her and he reveled in how it felt to have her there. It felt so right, so perfect, so utterly wonderful.

His eyes came open and he drew back to look at her. When he was with her, he didn’t think of the past, he didn’t torture himself about the future. He was just
here
, in this moment.

And though his addled mind knew that was a betrayal, a lie, a bitter forgetting of what he had lost…he still drowned in it, losing himself in her smile as she shifted to straddle him.

She kissed him again, deeply, and his mind emptied of his strange, drink-induced thoughts. He simply enjoyed the way she undulated above him, grinding down against him in the rhythm they would soon take together. He found the buttons along the back of her gown and began to unfasten them, and she shivered.

“This morning when you did that, it took everything in me not simply bend over and let you have me in the dressing room.”

Crispin’s cock throbbed at that unexpected and highly erotic admission. “I would have very much enjoyed that.”

She looked at him a moment, then got to her feet. She shrugged out of the now-unfastened dress and slowly turned to face the desk where they had already made love once before, with her bruises as a result.

She leaned over it, lifting her backside so that he could see the hint of her pink pussy through the slit in her drawers.

“You can enjoy it now,” she murmured. She blushed as she said it, her boldness still new to her, and he actually liked that all the more. She was every inch the lady, even when she was bent over in offering like the most talented bawd in town.

“I think I will,” he murmured, getting to his feet and unfastening the flap on his trousers. As the fabric fell to dangle between his legs, his cock popped free and he hissed as the warm air brushed over his sensitive skin.

He positioned himself behind her and reached his fingers through the opening in her drawers to stroke over her entrance. To his surprise, she was dripping wet, so very ready for him. He groaned at the heated response of her and the way she pushed back against his fingers as she sought relief. How had he been so lucky to be tricked into marriage with someone so well-matched to him physically?

He ignored the other ways they seemed to be well-matched and instead focused on aligning his hardness to her softness. She let out a low, keening sound as he slipped into her body, stretching her and claiming her.

“Hard,” she grunted as she gripped the edge of the desk. “Please.”